Most helpful positive review

Even though I am well aware of the history of collusion, reading this book forced me to draw breath and recall just how subversive, murderous and immoral was the British state and its cheer leaders in unionism and its apologists in the media. Anne Cadwallader is a good writer, forensic in her approach. Like her last book, Holy Cross, she cuts through the propaganda, the excuses, the pretexts, and lays bare the incontrovertible evidence of the British state's involvement in murdering and in condoning the murders of its own citizens.

Most helpful critical review

As an avid reader of history, especially about Ulster, i couldn't wait to read this book when i heard it was being published. There are plenty of reasons why they called the Troubles in Ulster...The Dirty War..., and the part this book sets out to tell, is still one surrounded in so much secrecy and controversy, around an area of Ulster that is almost impossible to infiltrate because of the dangers and isolation. This is an area steeped in hundreds of years of mistrust and violence between the communities, that just passes through the generations, so as ive read most if not all the books about Belfast, this book was to be different and i just couldn't wait to get my hands on it. However, it was clear from the start, that this book is not out to help the victims of those it mentions, or even to release the truth, in the hope that others can learn from the mistakes made, this book was nothing more than a propaganda stunt. I believe the author has used the plight and anguish of others as a whipping stick, for which to whip a 1970s police force, British army, and British Parliament, with hindsight and 21st century DNA. Unlike the other books to come out at this time, Stakeknife, MRF Shadow Troop, or Ten Thirty Three, all of which talk about the use of agents in Ulster, this book has been written not to explain, but to revenge. The hatred is palatable, and makes the book hard reading. Each Catholic death being personalized by friends and family, including autopsy reports detailing the full horrors of what the victims suffered, while Protestant deaths read like a emotionless dictionary. Had this book been written by any of the authors of the other books i have mentioned, it would only be a quarter of the size, the quarter that contains the actual facts. Were as the other 3 books have been written by those involved, with no axe to grind, giving first hand accounts of actual events, and explaining why, this book is written with a lot of leading through connections, assumptions and hopes for the reader to see it the way the writer wants. Names become blared, connections are thin, and in the end, i feel sorry for the victims families because i lost interest in the book, and so was low on any sympathy they might have deserved. It is only when you understand that the author is a famous pro Republican writer, and the wife of a respected Republican in Belfast, that the book starts to make sense. This also explains why she should give the occupations of her family of her family at the start. Her family being Army or Police protects her against accusations of bigotry. She also finds space for a nice little republican joke, when explaining how a republican hit team went out to shoot a Protestant and had to ask.....2 men wearing poppies....for their victims location. This means nothing to most readers, but for those who know a little of the history, what it is saying is......the republicans asked 2 protestants remembering the dead of 2 world wars, for another protestants address so they could murder him too, as Protestants are the only ones in Ulster who wear poppies. She and her husband must have had a great laugh at that. The greatest mystery in this book, is why the author took 15 years to put it together, when, as a respected republican, her husband and his friends could give her many stories and first hand accounts into unsolved murders in Ulster, though as most of those have been against the British army, police, or innocent Protestants and catholics, i can understand why she wouldn't want to write it, even though they could give her accurate details, names and descriptions, and she could have done 15 accurate books over the past 15 years, rather than just one with some facts in it. I really hope another author looks into this time of the troubles, and is able to do the victims, and their families some justice. This author wants us to believe that successive British governments, British army and police, all despised Catholics that much, that they set out to murder as many as possible, as often as possible. If you were to take this book on face value, you would wonder how there are any Catholics still alive in Ulster, but the one fact the author doesn't give you, anywhere in this book, is the one fact that her husbands mates can not hide, the fact that Republicans murdered more Catholics during the Troubles, than any other group, state or paramilitary. My biggest regret, is that i paid money for it, and some of that money will go to the author, who in turn will entertain some of those responsible for making that statement fact......................T

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Profoundly disturbing, Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland exposes the central role of British 'security forces' and their agents in a murder campaign that resulted in at least 120 deaths. The campaign was centred in an area of Counties Armagh and Tyrone that became known as the 'Triangle of Death', but its reach extended beyond this area to an equally lethal effect.

The book raises two main trains of thought in my mind.

The first is in the content of the book itself.The author sets her store early: the book focuses on the British security forces and Loyalist paramilitaries who combined to visit death and destruction on the Catholic population of the area. The book does not attempt to catalogue the activities of all the combatants active at that time. The Irish Republican Army and the mainstream British Army were engaged in their own campaigns, in this area and others, and their actions and histories have been recorded elsewhere - reported in the contemporary news media and in retrospective studies.

Cadwallader was previously a news journalist for BBC and RTÉ, and was a case worker for the Pat Finucane Centre for Human Rights at the time of writing this book. Her book has benefited from her access to research undertaken by the Finucane Centre and others which accessed official records at National Archives in both London and Dublin and from direct contact with the Historical Enquiries Team - a specialist police unit established after the Good Friday Agreement to review all the conflict-related deaths of the Troubles.

The first part of the book follows the sequence of killings from 1972 to 1978, and links official records and ballistic evidence to the the individuals who comprised, at various times, the 'Glenanne Gang'.

As well as the regular British Army forces on the ground at the time,(that is, Regiments recruiting and based in Gt Britain that were posted to the north of Ireland as part of their scheduled touring commitments)there was also a strong presence of locally recruited British Forces eg the police (Royal Ulster Constabulary and the RUC Reserve) and a local, home-based British Army regiment, Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR).

The most striking feature of this section is the identification of 24 members of the 'security forces' who were convicted of murder and other serious terrorist crimes. Others remain un-named because of the need not to prejudice any possible criminal cases, and in some cases the identities are unknown.

The next most significant feature to emerge is from the ballistic evidence. An internal British Army intelligence report indicates that loyalist paramilitary groups relied almost exclusively on weapons stolen from, or lost by, various UDR bases. Some of the weapons stolen from the UDR were subsequently used in multiple killings and attacks, sometimes featuring on 10 or more occasions.Even at this far remove, it seems incredible that British Army weapons could be 'stolen' and then used in multiple attacks in a campaign that killed at least 120 citizens of the State by former and serving members of the British Security Forces over a 6 year period and yet the combined might of British Army and Police intelligence could remain unaware of either the gang or individuals.

Cadwallader's book identifies many of the failings of the police investigations at the time; evidence ignored, leads not followed, charges made for minor offences when charges of murder would have been more obvious. The police officers in the existing Historical Enquiries Team, again and again, cannot account for the appalling deficiencies in the police work attendant to the murders perpetrated by their security force colleagues.

That there was collusion between British Security Forces, both in the British Army and the local Police force, the RUC, is now beyond any credible doubt. The cases of collusion here in Cadwallader's book and in Belfast and other places highlighted by reports of the Police Ombudsman and others are not contested by any but the most obdurate apologist for state-sanctioned murder.

The question that remains unanswered, though, is how far up the chain of police, military and political command that collusion goes, in terms of turning a 'blind eye', or actively instigating and facilitating the foot soldiers on the ground. I suspect those answers may never be revealed.

The second train of thought arises from how this sordid tale departs from the mainstream representation of those days in the north of Ireland; in TV and other news channels, and in dramas, movies and novels that use that era and place as a setting.

The standard Troubles tale goes something like this: two fanatical Irish tribes at war, the British (usually English) as the force of civilized good keeping the nihilist Irish apart, a hero (SAS? MI5?) arrives to save the day, usually with the love interest of a terrorist's sister or some other cause for crisis of conscience (conflicted between tribal loyalty and love across the barricades, etc).That was basically the plot for Gerald Seymour's Harry's Game in the 70's and has been more or less the template for the majority of novels and movies ever since. The variation on a theme may be something like a vulnerable, fragile loser being manipulated by 'Armchair Generals' who are actually criminal or political opportunists on the make.Even the great Belfast writer Brian Moore, in his Lies Of Silence'Lies of Silence', follows the basic convention that there are good guys (police, army, security force of some kind) and there are bad guys (fanatical Irish 'terrorists', irrational purveyors of tribal hate and scorched earth revenge).

Most of these books, if they mention collusion at all, place the errant security forces people as an exception that proves the rule, an aberration, 'a few rotten apples', and the central tenet of good guys = official security forces and bad guys = fanatical terrorists still holds true.

That simple narrative, although convenient, seems a lot less palatable after reading Cadwallader's book even if the obvious question, of how high up the ladder the rot rose, is unlikely to ever be satisfactorily resolved.

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Bought this as a gift for a family member. Apparently it is a great read, intriguing, and gives plenty of scope for pondering just what exactly went on in N.Ireland. Would recommend to anyone interested in reading about N.Ireland and its troubled history.

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Riveting. Clearly a tremendous amount of research has gone into this book. It reveals a very dark side to our history that has yet to be properly address by the authorities - and I suspect never will be.

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Brilliant exposé of a government's murder of hundreds of its own citizens. I believe even IRA and Sinn Féin members (who knew there was collusion) are shocked about the extent of British involvement with the loyalist death squads. They killed random, uninvolved Catholics to terrorise the nationalist population.The book also shows the Dublin media for what they were: cowards. Irish journalists (with very few exceptions) never made any attempt to investigate this story, and that has to be the most shameful dereliction of professional duty in recent memory. Although, when Ireland was a virtual theocracy they said nothing,,,, when Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney were destroying the economy they said nothing. Our media are a disgrace to themselves and their families.